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Omar Rifai

Director General

Biography

Dr. Omar Abdul-Monem Rifai is currently the Senior Advisor to HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal at the Majlis El Hassan, The Royal Hashemite Court, as well as being the Director-General of the WANA Institute, both positions being in Amman. He was previously Director of the Arab Affairs Division, as well as Representative of the Commissioner-General, at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman from 2015-2017. Prior to that, Dr.Rifai was a former Secretary-General of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry (twice), President of the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, and the first Executive-Director of the West Asia North Africa (WANA) Forum. The career diplomat is a graduate of Harvard and Georgetown Universities.
Ambassador Rifai joined the Jordanian Diplomatic Service in 1975 and served in Jordan’s missions in Cairo, Bern, New York, London and Washington between 1976 and 1994. Between 1994 and 1996, he held the position of Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Director of the Special Bureau at the Foreign Ministry in Amman. He was also a member of the Jordanian delegation to the Jordan-Israel peace talks in 1994. In 1996, Mr. Rifai was sworn in as an Ambassador and during the period 1996-2008 he headed Jordan’s diplomatic missions in Israel, Italy and Egypt, where he was also Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League in Cairo. During the periods 2004-2005, and 2009-2017, he was a part-time lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Jordan, as well as regularly lecturing foreign students in Study Abroad Programmes in Jordan. Dr. Rifai holds a number of Jordanian and foreign decorations.